For many people under the age of 30 living in Northern Ireland, the controversy around the Drumcree dispute belongs to a bygone era.

Yet at the height of the Orange Order stand-off in the late 1990s, more than 2,000 British army troops and police were deployed in the nationalist Garvaghy Road area of Portadown which had a population of about 4,500.

Images of violent clashes were beamed around the world.

It is the longest-running parading dispute in the North and has been linked to several sectarian murders.

A Parades Commission was established by the British government in 1998 as a direct result of Drumcree – the Orange Order has not marched on the Garvaghy Road since 1997 – and the row largely disappeared from the news agenda.

Its re-emergence was sparked by a scathing legal ruling against the commission last month, which resulted in a judge quashing the body’s decision to ban the parade along the contentious nationalist route.

The case was taken by a member of the Orange Order’s Portadown district lodge.

Unionism moving to ‘more extreme element’ on Drumcree march, Michelle O’Neill warns

The outcome led to a fresh application for a silent, limited parade at the end of this month.

Since 1807, Orange Order members have walked through the Garvaghy Road on the return leg of their traditional parade from Drumcree Church on the last Sunday before the Twelfth.

But changing demographics in the historically unionist Co Armagh town led to increasing tensions among nationalist residents during the 1990s.

Protests escalated among those living on the Garvaghy Road who branded the marches sectarian and triumphalist.

Disorder broke out in 1995 following a decision by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the North’s police force at the time, to reroute the parade to prevent it from going down the Garvaghy Road.

Despite a large sit-down protest by nationalists, it was allowed to go through.

Over the next two summers, the violence intensified as loyalist rioting erupted across Northern Ireland when the marches were banned.

U-turns were once again performed, which triggered nationalist riots.

In 1996, the murder of Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldick by loyalist paramilitaries in Lurgan, Co Armagh, took place during the Drumcree tensions.

When the newly established Parades Commission imposed an official ban on the parade in 1998, it led to the most serious disorder in the dispute’s history.

Thousands of loyalists travelled to Drumcree and an enormous ring of steel was erected by the army to seal off the route.

There were days of civil unrest.

Many nationalist residents spoke of being “barricaded” into their homes by RUC Saracens; there was no chemist, only one grocery shop, and food convoys were sent from as far as Derry.

On July 12th, 1998, one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles effectively ended the stand-off.

Three Catholic children – Richard, Mark, and Jason Quinn – were murdered in a petrol bomb attack on their home in a predominantly Protestant housing estate in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.

The killings took place just three months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement.

Then US president Bill Clinton was among those to condemn the murders.

The Orange Order’s Co Armagh chaplain at the time, Rev William Bingham, called for the Drumcree protest to end: “No road is worth a life, let alone the lives of three little boys.”

Since 1998, the Orange Order has reapplied to the commission which has repeatedly reissued the restrictions.

Orange Order applies to march down Garvaghy Road in Portadown

Orangemen then march from Drumcree Church to the start of the rerouted section, where they hand over a letter of protest to a police officer. A token protest also takes place every Sunday.

Protests were also held by residents living along the Garvaghy Road.

For more than 25 years, there has been relative peace in Portadown during the marching season.

“Now it’s very much a case of, ‘we socialise together, we work together and the kids are going to school together’. We are involved in a huge amount of cross-community work with the local rugby club,” Paul Carvill of Tír na nÓg GAA club in Portadown told The Irish Times three years ago.